Meet Mateo, the high school student on a mission to help kids

In 2024, Mateo (second from right) started a club at his Florida high school to fundraise for ChildFund. It’s taught him a lot about leadership and giving back to others.

At the arts-centered high school that 18-year-old Mateo attends in West Palm Beach, Florida, clubs are an important part of the student experience.

“We have around 120 clubs!” Mateo laughs. The goal, he explains, is to get students and faculty out of their comfort zones and actively building leadership skills, including those that relate to community service.

This is a topic that has always been near to Mateo’s heart. As a child, he remembers watching his mother get involved in charity work through Emmaus, an organization helping people experiencing homelessness rebuild their lives.

“Life is not fair for a lot of kids,” he says. “There are always going to be the people who have everything, and the people who have to work really hard for it.” But children, Mateo says, are like flowers: They universally need a safe, resource-rich environment to grow and reach their full potential.

In his junior year of high school, Mateo found himself on a mission to start a club of his own. He banded together with some friends and started to research different organizations, especially those that served young people.

“Of all the nonprofits that we saw, we liked the background of ChildFund a lot – and the history of a strong community,” Mateo says. “We see how much work you guys put into it, where the money goes. It’s pretty organized. And we wanted to do this with a nonprofit that was really well-established.”

Mateo and his friends worked with ChildFund staff to receive the training and materials they needed to lay the groundwork for the club, then found a teacher who would sponsor it.

The ChildFund Club officially launched in August 2024. Since its inception, Mateo and his team have led a card-making activity for students to send encouragement to children around the world, as well as held a ChildFund fundraiser at their local ice skating rink. Through ticket sales and a raffle at the event, the club was able to raise $650 to help children in greatest need around the world.

A handful of encouraging cards Mateo’s classmates made for ChildFund to distribute to children.

Mateo says he’s learned a lot from starting the club.

“Every time I do a ChildFund activity, it comes back to the idea of what it means to be a leader. It means being good at taking care of most of it,” he says. “Even if you have assigned a task to someone else, you have to be ready to take on anything that happens. You have to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. You have to – whether you like or not – know how to do every single job.

“I’ve also learned that a great idea never just comes to you overnight. You have to build up to it. You fix it, you add on to it, until you achieve the ideal version of it.”

What’s next for Mateo? This year, he plans to lead a story-writing activity in which students at his school can share short stories with children in ChildFund programs around the world. With many aspiring artists and writers in attendance at the school, activities like these are always appreciated for more reasons than one!

In May, Mateo will graduate from high school, passing the baton of leading the ChildFund Club to a younger student. He hopes to study either architecture or civil engineering in college, but one thing is for sure: He’ll continue leading efforts to make the world a better place.

 “There is so much potential in kids,” he says. “I believe if I put my effort into helping those who need resources, who need the right amount of help at the right time, it’s worth it.

“It’s like what Frederick Douglass said – it’s easier to build strong children than fix broken adults. A strong foundation is what everybody needs.”

Want to learn more about fundraising for ChildFund in your community? Give us a call at 1-800-776-6767 or shoot us an email at questions@childfund.org. We’d love to help you get started!